


Wall of Dreams

by EternalRedWolfe



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 21:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14839184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalRedWolfe/pseuds/EternalRedWolfe
Summary: "I would love to live in LA.  That close, to that many shoes?"Cordelia Chase has wanted to move to LA for as long as she could remember.  But now that the time has she begins to wonder if that's what she truly wants.





	Wall of Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a prompt in a facebook group. The prompt was 'The First Time' and the restiction was to use the three nouns: floral, salt, skyline.

**Restrictions - Use/Conceptualization of the Following nouns:  Floral, Skyline Salt.**

Cordelia Chase was faced with a dilemma. 

She was alive.

She had assumed that if the apocalypse was going to happen, she would die.  If it didn't come, then nothing would have changed.  But everything was different now.  The mayor was dead.  Many of her classmates were dead.  And she was alive.  She sat in her bedroom, on the floor, a bowl of popcorn by her side; and as she dropped a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth and rubbed the crystals of salt between her fingers, she considered her options, both of which could be summed up by the four walls surrounding her.

Option number 1 - the wall in front of her.  She turned thirteen and immediately she had begun planning for her future.  Any pictures of Los Angeles she could find went on her wall, which was, by now, completely covered by the snippets.  She'd even gone to travel agencies a handful of times for brochures.  A decent portion of the wall was covered with images of the beach, another with the buildings, signage and mountains that made up the LA skyline, and finally a section dedicated to images and testimonials of the fame LA represented. 

Her second option was represented by her other three walls.  Her three  _empty_ walls, covered with nothing except the floral wallpaper that had covered her walls since she was a child, had been a symbol of her youth and a safety net for when things were awful in her life.  When she was a little girl, when she would get nightmares and once she'd learned that going to her parents was useless, she would stay in her bed, which was pushed up against the wall, and pull the covers tightly over her, squeeze her eyes shut and trace the floral imprint.  It calmed her - made her think she could overcome anything.  And now those flowers were the only remnant of her childhood - everything else had been taken by the IRS.  When she was in the hospital, after she found out Xander had cheated on her and she got impaled by a rebar, she didn't want to be there.  She wanted to be at home, surrounded by her wallpaper, where she was safe.  She stood up and walked over to the wall, tracing the flowers.   

Tonight was clearly a night for firsts.  She dusted her first vamp tonight and now, for the first time ever, she was faced with a desire to say f*** it to her dreams.  To stay.

She thought back to last year, when Drusilla and her vampires stormed the library, killing Kendra, injuring Willow and Xander, and kidnapping and torturing Giles.  Buffy had said she was smart.  Maybe it was: had she stayed she very well could have ended up like Kendra.  But she still ran and a piece of her would never forgive herself. 

Cordelia walked over to her skyline, her wall of dreams.

And with on swift swoop of her arm, she tore it down.


End file.
